This invention relates to sonar transducers and more particularly to an improved, wide bandwidth sonar transducer array characterized by a multiplicity of electro-acoustic transducer elements in a spherically curved arrangement so as to provide a wide angle, conical beam, and further to a method of manufacture of the array.
Sonar transducers comprising arrays of a multiplicity of transducer elements arranged in various configurations including plane, cylindrical, and spherical are known in the art. One object has generally been to form narrow beams by various phase shifting or delay processing of the inputs/outputs of individual elements. In the case of curved arrays, focusing of acoustic energy to provide an intensely insonified region has been in some instances an object and in other instances a problem. Moreover, in high power arrays comprising a multiplicity of individual transducer elements, maintaining the integrity of electrical and mechanical connections has been a problem of long standing.
Sonar arrays are generally more or less individually constructed by hand, and the placing of elements is generally critical to performance. Particularly in the case of spherically curved arrays, proper element placing and uniformity of performance from array to array is difficult to achieve. Accordingly, as in any field of production, manufacturing methods that lead to precision in translating design to practical embodiment is desirable.